Published: January 16, 2008 12:35 am            

MPA ‘roast’: Stick a fork in ‘Momentum Mississippi’s’ Topazi

The state's press is planning to "roast" Mississippi Power Company president and CEO Anthony J. Topazi next week and it promises to be an "electric" evening.

Okay, that's one bad power company joke down, a hundred to go.Topazi is also chairman of Momentum Mississippi, a public-private partnership appointed by Gov. Haley Barbour to enhance the state's economic development future.

He previously served on the steering committee of Blueprint Mississippi and co-chaired its economic development work group. He helped form and serves as chairman of the Gulf Coast Business Council, a business organization focused on crucial public policy issues.

Topazi, who emerged as one of the state's true business community heroes in leading his company and his region through an unprecedented natural disaster when Hurricane Katrina pounded Mississippi in 2005, had been at the helm of the utility company for less than two years when the storm landed.

Since 1990, the state's newspapers and luminaries from Mississippi politics, higher education, and the arts have come together annually to poke fun at each other for the benefit of journalism scholarship and internships at Mississippi universities and colleges.

To that end, the Mississippi Press Association Education Foundation has sponsored an annual celebrity "roast" - and the results have been generally enjoyable and inarguably productive in terms of putting scholarship dollars in the hands of deserving students and university journalism programs.

The honorees have been a diverse group. The late storyteller Jerry Clower's roast was - like Jerry - larger than life. Clower kept that commitment to MPA despite the fact that his health was not at all good at the time of the event.

From Mississippi newspapers, prior honorees include retired Kosciusko newspaper publisher W.C. Shoemaker, veteran political columnist Bill Minor, longtime Clarion-Ledger sports columnist Rick Cleveland and retired Ole Miss journalism department head Dr. Wil Norton.

From politics, honorees have included the late longtime Agriculture Commissioner Jim Buck Ross, the late 3rd District U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery, U.S. Sens. Thad Cochran and Trent Lott, former state supreme court justice Reuben Anderson, former attorney general Mike Moore, Gov. Barbour and Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck.

Former Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians Chief Phillip Martin was another honoree who volunteered for a little verbal heat for a good cause. As usual, Chief Martin gave as good as he got. Last year, the honoree was Ole Miss Chancellor Robert C. Khayat.

The MPA Education Foundation roast of Topazi will be held on Thursday, January 24 at the Jackson Hilton on County Line Road in Jackson with a reception at 6 p.m. and the main event at 7 p.m.

Tickets are $80 each while tables of eight are available for $575. For ticket information, interested readers can call MPA's Beth Boone at 601-981-3060.

Scheduled to "roast" Topazi are: Mississippi Economic Council president Blake Wilson; Sun Herald newspaper publisher Ricky Matthews; Mississippi Gaming Commission chairman Jerry St. Pe'; and First Lady Marsha Barbour.

Topazi, a recent inductee into the Mississippi Business Hall of Fame, is a worthy target for a salute from the state's press and patrons of journalism education in Mississippi.

His calm, dedicated leadership of Mississippi Power's employees helped turn the lights back on in Mississippi after Katrina - and that, as most Mississippians know - was no small feat.



Contact Sid Salter at (601) 961-7084 or e-mail ssalter@clarionledger.com. Visit his blog at http://www.clarionledger.com.

        

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